The Hindu Business Line : Karnataka to buy areca from growers

THE Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, on Wednesday inaugurated a market intervention scheme for arecanut, a long-standing demand of the areca growers hit by plummeting prices during the past two years.

The Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and Processing Co-operative (Campco), which has been appointed the nodal agency for the scheme being implemented with assistance from the Centre and the Karnataka Government, is to purchase 10,000 tonnes of fair average quality arecanut at Rs 60 per kg.

Although the scheme was officially inaugurated on Wednesday, Campco hopes to commence purchases at 17 centres in the State from August 26. Campco received the official order to go ahead with the scheme from the Karnataka Government on Tuesday.

Though in its original form the scheme is to be operational only till August 31 primarily due to a delay in announcement caused at various levels, Campco hopes that the scheme would be continued for at least three months from the date of commencement.

Launching the market intervention scheme, Mr Fernandes said the External Affairs Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, would, among other things, discuss the possibility of extending areca trade with the SAARC nations during the course of the SAARC meeting underway at Kathmandu.

In an hour-long speech in Kannada, Mr Fernandes spoke on the economy in general in the post-WTO scenario and sought to give the "areca conundrum" a swadeshi twist and place the issue in a broader context.

According to Mr Fernandes, the day gutkha was banned in Uttar Pradesh, various varieties of European gutkha manufactured with Western technology flooded the market, an occurrence symptomatic of the way the global market functions. He sought a probe into the entry of the European gutkha.

Mr Fernandes said he would take up the issue of gutkha ban with the Union Health Minister, Mr Shatrughan Sinha. He said he would bring to his notice the fact that lakhs of families in the country were dependent on areca and that a fall in prices would impoverish a large section of the farming community.

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